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Please scroll down to submit this letter, and any additional text, to the offices Governor Andrew Cuomo and Natural Resource Defense Council’s senior counsel Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

To the offices of Governor Andrew Cuomo c/o Riverkeeper and Natural Resource Defense Council’s senior counsel Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,

As part of a growing national movement, I [your-name], am compelled to petition you to support a total ban on gas drilling in low-permeable deposits in New York State,

Whereas:

1. With a failure rate of between 2 to 8 percent, horizontal drilling and hydrofracking pose an unacceptable risk to our drinking water and the quality of groundwater, aquifers, lakes and streams

2. Drilling will introduce over 250 chemicals into our air and water, placing local residents, wildlife, and critical agriculture and watershed areas at risk

3. Communities where hydrofracking has occurred have experienced explosions, fires, spills, stream contamination, and well pollution as well as degradation of aquifers and other water supplies

4. Local emergency services, including volunteer fire departments, EMS units, and healthcare providers, will be severely stressed and placed at considerable risk from accidents

5. Gas drilling in NYS will involve construction of a massive infrastructure of wellheads, pipelines, compressing stations, and processing centers spread across much of rural upstate NY

6. Infrastructure development will involve extensive clearcutting, 24-hour noise and light pollution, huge increases of truck traffic, and the permanent altering of existing landscapes

7. Industrialization is incompatible with agriculture, tourism, recreation; drilling and related development will significantly alter existing use patterns of rural areas

8. Compulsory integration of neighboring landowners to allow gas extraction against their wishes is an unlawful seizure of land and an unconstitutional abuse of power

9. Extensive drilling will undermine property values and increase tax burdens on local citizens, creating boom and bust economic cycles in local communities

10. NYC’s Dept. of Environmental Protection has concluded that hydrofracking is too dangerous for the city’s Catskill/Delaware watershed

11. NYS DEC’s draft Environmental Impact Statement (dSGEIS) is fatally flawed in its open support of drilling, its minimization and dismissal of risks, and its failure to consider the total cost of drilling

12. NYS DEC is seriously understaffed and underfunded, and is in no position to regulate and effectively monitor drilling in NYS, and

13. Recent preliminary assessments reveal that “natural” gas is not “clean energy” but rather just another polluting, non-renewable fossil fuel contributing to global warming

We call on you, Governor Andrew Cuomo and staff, to put the people first and protect our health, environment, communities, and future by banning horizontal drilling and hydrofracking to release gas from low-permeable stone formations in New York State.

 

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Signed,